Sources in bold are must-includes. Others are suggested.
This list covers what I consider central sources in the field that should be considered for any exam list.
- John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty
- Nelson Goodman, “The New Riddle of Induction”
- Paul Oppenheim and Hilary Putnam, “Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis”
- Carl Hempel, “Studies in the Logic of Confirmation”
- Carl Hempel, “Aspects of Scientific Explanation”
- Karl Popper, “Science: Conjectures and Refutations”
- Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery
- Paul Feyerabend, “Explanation, Reduction, and Empiricism”
- Thomas Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions
- Thomas Kuhn, “The Function of Dogma in Scientific Research”
- Paul Feyerabend, Against Method
- Imre Lakatos, Proofs and Refutations
- Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (ads), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (especially chapters by Kuhn, Watkins, Toulmin, Popper, Masterman, Lakatos, and Feyerabend)
- Jerry Fodor, “Special Sciences, or the Disunity of Science as a
Working Hypothesis” - Ernest Nagel, “Issues in the Logic of Reductive Explanations”
- Paul Churchland, Scientific Realism and Plasticity of Mind
- Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts
- Bas van Fraasen, The Scientific Image
- Larry Laudan, “A Confutation of Convergent Realism”
- Richard Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism & Relativism
- Nancy Cartwright, How the Laws of Physics Lie
- Ian Hacking, Representing and Intervening
- Simon Schaffer and Steven Shapin, Leviathan and the Air-Pump
- Bruno Latour, Science in Action
- John Worrall, “Structural Realism: The Best of Both Worlds?”
- Philip Kitcher, The Advancement of Science
- Sandra Mitchell, “Pragmatic Laws”
- Ron Giere, Science without Laws
- Nancy Cartwright, The Dappled World
- Paul Feyerabend, Conquest of Abundance
- Stathis Psillos, Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth
- Hasok Chang, Inventing Temperature
- Ron Giere, Scientific Perspectivism
- Hasok Chang, Is Water H2O?
The following list of sources is for those who want to include a special focus on the topic of Science and Values in their exam list. In my view, this is a very significant area of the field to focus on and one that I feel very confident to advise exams and dissertations on. If you do not want to focus on this topic, you should still strongly consider including the bolded sources.
- Richard Rudner, “The Scientist Qua Scientist Makes Value Judgments”
- Carl Hempel, “Science and Human Values”
- Thomas Kuhn, “Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice”
- Paul Feyerabend, “How to Defend Society Against Science”
- Paul Feyerabend, Science in a Free Society
- Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”
- Helen Longino, Science as Social Knowledge
- Kathleen Okruhlik, “Gender and the Biological Sciences”
- Heather Douglas, “Inductive Risk and Values in Science”
- Elizabeth Anderson, “Uses of Value Judgments in Science”
- Philip Kitcher, Science, Truth, and Democracy
- John Dupre, “Fact and Value”
- Heather Douglas, Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal
- Janet Kourany, Philosophy of Science After Feminism
- Maya Goldenberg, Vaccine Hesitancy